Shaving and Innovation in Education

by Anthony Gaughan

I recently started shaving with a straight razor. No, this isn’t going to be a post about how manly I am.

It’s going to be about how I decided to make this change, and what this has to do with my becoming mistrustful of innovation as a force for positive educational change.

I realise I was fortunate, in retrospect: I am old enough to have a father who shaves regularly with an old-fashioned safety razor. Some of my earliest product allegiances were formed watching my father unpack Wilkinson Sword double edge blades and splash on Old Spice aftershave.

More importantly, I got to witness what was, I know now, a ritual. The way my father would go about this daily task never changed, and it always produced the results he seemed to want, in a straightforward and easy manner.

Naturally, I wanted to grow up to be just like him. So, as soon as my pubescent growth would allow it, I tried my hand at shaving. I imitated my father exactly, and learnt two things very quickly: first, there is nothing quite so effective at focusing the young mind than taking a razor to one’s throat, and second, shaving, to be done well, is first and foremost a matter of practice and also having good, basic tools.

So I practised, and over time I became good. Never as good as my father, I thought, but good enough for me.

Then I went to university and lived with people other than my family for the first time. Bathrooms full of other people’s stuff. What caught my attention was the other guys’ shaving gear. Gillette Mach 3, Braun electric razors – stuff I’d seen on TV but never seriously thought anyone actually used.

Naturally, I became curious. In the following years, I collected all manner of new, improved system razors – ones that had two blades, three blades, even four blades; blades diamond-coated and allegedly so sharp they had to be kept “behind bars” (remember those?). I tried them all.

But each time I tried what I thought was the last possible refinement in men’s grooming, out came a new one: this time battery-powered, this time vibrating (not a quality I’d ever considered desirable in a razor, but obviously someone had thought it would be a good idea.).

It was exhausting, both mentally and financially. After a while, I did the only sensible thing: I gave up.

Basically, I came to realise three things: one, the flood of innovation was never going to stop because it was lucrative for someone else, and two, none of the shaves I’d experienced as a result of any of these innovations had been any better, easier or cheaper than the one I used to get from my dad’s old safety razor, so I was paying in more than just money.

Third, and crucially, it wasn’t enjoyable anymore. It wasn’t pleasurable. It didn’t make me look forward to doing it again tomorrow.

There was no ritual to it. At least, no sense of ritual.

So I went back and dusted off (or rusted off) my old razor and went back to basics. It took a while to get back into the habit, but everything felt so much better. And the results were better. Fewer cuts, less razor burn, cheaper.

I could have considered case closed at this point, but a question had started to form in the deep recesses of my brain.

If a simple double edge safety razor can out-perform all the new developments that Gillette and co. have to offer, was it possible to step even further away from innovation, really go back to basics, and get improved results?

So I bought a straight razor.

So simple. So effective, so challenging and yet so easy. The closest, most enjoyable shaves of my life. And fewer nicks and cuts than with any other kind of razor, The irony was that I’d always thought that straight razor shaving had fallen out of fashion because it was too complicated and expensive; actually the opposite is true. Every innovation in this area made this basic necessary routine more resource-intensive, more wasteful, more costly and less effective than it had originally been. The perfect hoodwink.

What does any of this have to do with education?

Everything, actually.

Innovation and efficacy are big at the moment. The EdTech movement of today is filling the space that the courseware bloat of yesteryear had occupied in discussions of the direction in which our profession is moving. The discussions of tomorrow will increasingly be, or be pushed towards being about efficacy or other non-concepts designed to promote not learning, but product sales.

I think this is a problem. First of all, it is, I suspect, leading to a massive waste of resources, both in terms of raw materials and human labour. Second, I suspect it is leading to an enfeeblement of teaching skills of the kind that actually matter. Third, I suspect it is driven not by serious educational ideals but by financial motives. Finally, and crucially, I think it is taking the fun, the ritual, out of education.

I do not wish to say that nothing should ever be improved or that the old-fashioned ways of doing things are a priori best, nor do I wish to say that technology is evil.

But I think it is worth remembering that in education, as in shaving, an innovation is not necessarily an improvement. For an innovation to be an improvement, it has to meet two simple criteria: it has to be a solution to a real problem, and it has actually to improve things. Buying into anything else is being hoodwinked.

Let’s avoid being hoodwinked, if we can, and instead of buying into the latest innovations simply because they are sold as innovations, let’s rather focus our talents towards becoming practised once again in making good, practised use of basic tools.

Anthony Gaughan will be one of the four speakers at our IATEFL 2015 Pre-Conference Event. He blogs at http://teachertrainingunplugged.com

3 Comments

Chas
on 07/07/2015 at 3:42 am

Interesting because I am so pleased to have a wet/dry electric razor I had avoiding shaving because regular blade shaving caused skin problems, and old style electric razors did the same. My experience as a teacher is that there are technology innovations that have students pleading to be able to use them, students who reluctantly submit to the listening practice will grab the tablet with the addictively designed ( but admittedly limited vocab app), they will ask to do the PC programme which is really testing their spelling but they like playing with their friends and choosing which animal character they will be.

So different skins – different classrooms – but I think technology’s potential to engage an increasingly game-oriented group of learners can’t be overlooked, and neither should the teacher’s role in working alongside the learners. It’s just another tool isn’t it chalk, whiteboards. OHPs, audio, videos……it’s how we use it.

Maybe I’ve misunderstood what you mean by Edtech and innovation, but in my view technology has a firm place, and innovation is desperately need to reach students who seem impervious to current methods and approaches.

Thad Launderville
on 15/07/2015 at 8:48 am

I wrote an entire blog that is the inverse of your thesis: how education applies to shaving. Even “traditional shaving,” I found, is horribly commercial, but perhaps your readers could appreciate it — Physics teachers for sure. I called it Classic Shaving Academy.

Even the article about Galahad and the Holy Grail is secretly a tribute to the old headmaster who once gave us an important address about Camelot. Referencing JFK at the height of the Reagan era… ah, the things you appreciate when you’re over 40!

Patricia Reynolds
on 22/07/2015 at 8:32 pm

I had the wonderful opportunity to see EdTech in action at a conference this summer.. it was not domain specific but covered all domains and the students were totally unaware they were learning while doing. The best take away from this was that when students engage with each other with teacher support..they forget they are engaging in learning and become active participants in the event..It truly has more to do with the design of the lesson and how the teacher implements the technology to support the learning.